


Dreadful Thing, After

by TheMoments (TBs_LMC)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, Gay Male Character, Kissing, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Promises, Skyhold (Dragon Age), Tevinter Imperium (Dragon Age), True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28248795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments
Summary: Now that Corypheus has been defeated, Dorian thinks Cullen's going to discard him and Cullen thinks Dorian's leaving for Tevinter.orRectifying false assumptions using your words.
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 1
Kudos: 45





	Dreadful Thing, After

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after Corypheus is defeated, during the party that happens at the end of the main game. It assumes that Dorian and Cullen have been in a long-term relationship during the events of the game, making it completely non-canon just from that alone. :-)

**DREADFUL THING, AFTER**

* * *

The truth, such as it was, was finally hitting home. Only as Cullen watched the Inquisitor and the inner circle return from the defeat of Corypheus…as the Inquisitor walked up the steps, as Cullen’s eyes caught Dorian’s down below looking weary, body bruised, utter exhaustion threatening to pull him down, did he realize it was the end.

Not the end of the Inquisition, necessarily, but…his breath hitched as he bowed to the Inquisitor, paying due reverence to the woman who’d gone from shackled prisoner bathed in suspicion to the leader of the most powerful force Thedas had seen since Tevinter’s reign of north and south.

Tevinter.

Dorian.

Cullen’s heart ached as he forced a smile, crowd cheering.

Later after the accolades had been given, his limbs felt heavy and slow as he moved along the top of the wall looking for the one person who wasn’t at the party filling the great hall.

Something told him he was losing Dorian soon. A painful pull in his gut. A rock settling in his belly. An ache in his chest that nearly forced him to his knees as it stole his breath. There…a silhouette in that old familiar place, heading into an empty tower that they’d not yet had need for and thus it had remained filled with old bunkbeds and broken wooden planks and rotting fallen pictures.

It was where they had first encountered one another in the middle of the night whilst both being unable to sleep. Would it also be the last place they’d encounter one another? Cullen didn’t know why he hadn’t paid any attention to this inevitability before. Yes, he did, he thought with anger as he opened the door. He’d been hiding from it. You can’t fall in love with a man whose love for his country was so great, so wide, so deep, that he couldn’t _not_ try to help make it better, and pretend not to know that it could mean losing him when all was said and done.

They’d both avoided the subject. But it hung there nonetheless, like a great druffalo standing between them at all times.

Now that Corypheus was dead, did that signal the beginning of the end for them in spite of their murmured and sighed confessions over two years of loving each other, living in a castle room together, being the couple that surprisingly, so many of the Inquisition and even beyond, looked to as a shining example of how Templars and Mages _can_ peacefully exist. How Ferelden and Tevinter can, too. The two of them so vastly different, light and dark, and yet their love had opened doors and paved roads for so many others.

The Inquisitor had once, in the way she often got soft when she spoke with those she loved so dearly, told Cullen as much point-blank. Words he had repeated to Dorian then, and said to him again now.

“I love you both without reservation and must give you the due you deserve.”

Dorian’s shadow turned, then, from its place against the opposite wall.

“For you have taught the world the power of love.”

A hitched sob from the mage and just like that, Cullen was across the room and they were in each other’s arms holding each other so tightly Cullen knew he must be crushing the love of his life. But Dorian wouldn’t or maybe couldn’t let go. Allowed no space to exist between them. Clung to the fourth fur mantle Cullen had owned in his time with the Inquisition.

“Are you…” Dorian’s voice tapered off as he tried to right his breathing. “What becomes of us now?”

Cullen pulled away enough to look into Dorian’s eyes, foolishly, as it was completely dark in the room. Instead he brought their foreheads together. “I don’t know what becomes of the Inquisition,” he stated, “but I’m just as terrified of losing you in this moment as I was when you left to fight Corypheus.”

“Losing me?” Dorian asked through a tear-filled voice. “Where do you think I’m going to be lost to?”

“I…thought you would return to Tevinter now that Corypheus is dead.”

Dorian huffed out a laugh, then allowed himself to chuckle a bit more thoroughly.

“What’s so damn funny about that?” Cullen asked, trying to pull away in annoyance.

But Dorian wouldn’t have it. He kept his love’s fur held tightly in his fists as he replied, “I came here because I thought you’d tell me that we’d had our fun but now that the threat had passed you were moving on.”

“What?” Cullen asked incredulously. “After all we’ve meant to each other, all these years? You think I would…what must you think of the person I am to believe I would simply abandon you in this way?”

“I think more highly of you than I can say,” Dorian replied. “As you do of me, apparently, that we would sacrifice our own individual happiness to see our duties to our homelands fulfilled.”

Cullen couldn’t argue with that. “But for right now, Thedas is safe,” he whispered. “More importantly, we’re both still alive and we won and…”

“What is it?” Dorian asked, hand coming to rest palm-flat on Cullen’s cheek, thumb stroking the scar on his upper lip.

“I…we’ve never talked further of what comes after. Beyond me asking and you responding that you honestly didn’t know.”

“I still don’t. None of us do. This is unmapped territory, _amatus_.”

“I know,” Cullen replied, hand coming up to cover Dorian’s. “But in case it influences your decisions, I want you to know that as much as I love Ferelden and will always proudly call myself its son, I…” He breathed in, it caught, it stuttered, his heart flopped.

Dorian’s thumb ceased movement. “Tell me.”

“I will not remain behind without you,” Cullen finally stated with a firmness that meant countering the statement would bring an argument of possibly epic proportions. “Where you go, Dorian of House Pavus, formerly of Minrathous but now of Skyhold…take me with you.”

“Such scandal in the streets of Tevinter to bring a southern Templar into their midst?” Dorian asked, much of his bravado returning the suredness to his voice.

Just what Cullen so desperately needed to hear, and he sighed into the gentle kiss Dorian gifted him with.

“I promise you that yes, wherever I go I will take you,” Dorian said after long moments spent sharing each other’s breaths, “if you promise the same. That way, we’re both covered and we can both stop moping about being separated.”

“I promise,” Cullen said with a nod, arms enveloping Dorian’s slighter frame with joy and peace.

“As do I, _amatus_.”

They eventually made it back to the celebration. With big smiles. And a few buckles not done up quite right…


End file.
